THE BIRDS OF NORTHERN THAILAND 297 



tipped and margined along the outer web with yellowish white; the 

 secondaries black, broadly margined along the outer web with golden- 

 olive and sometimes narrowly tipped with yellow ; the rectrices black 

 with an outwardly increasingly broad golden-yellow tip, which, on the 

 outermost pair, covers over half the feather. The adult female is 

 similar but has the yellow parts more strongly suffused with green; 

 the underparts often with more or less obsolescent dark shaft streaks. 

 Immatures are much duller, lack black markings on the head, and 

 have the underparts largely whitish with heavy blackish streaks. 



ORIOLUS CHINENSIS DIFFUSUS Bowdler Sharpe 



Chinese Black-naped Oriole 



Oriolus diffusus Bowdler Sharpe, Catalogue of the birds in the British Museum, 



vol. 3, 1877, p. 197. New name for Oriolus indicus Jerdon 1845 (Malabar), 



which is, in any case, preoccupied by Oriolus indicus Daudin, 1802. 

 Oriolus indicus [partim], Gyiiienstolpe, Journ. Nat. Hist. Soc. Siam, 1915, p. 



168 (listed [=Khun Tan (partim)}). 

 Oriolus indicus, Gyldenstolpe, Kungl. Svenska Vet.-Akad. Handl., 1916, p. 22 



(Khun Tan, Pha Hing). 

 Oriolus indicus indicus [partim], Gyldenstolpe, Ibis, 1920, p. 452 ("Throughout 



the whole country" [partim] ) . 

 Oriolus chinensis tenuirostris [partim], Deignan, Journ Siam Soc. Nat. Hist. 



Suppl., 1931, p. 150 (Doi Suthep [partim]); 1936, p. 102 (Doi Suthep 



[partim] ) . 

 Oriolus chinensis diffusus, Riley, U. S. Nat. Mus. Bull. 172, 1938, p. 294 (Ban 



Nam Khian). 



The Chinese black-naped oriole presumably occurs throughout our 

 provinces but, up to the present time, is known from the territory 

 west of the Khun Tan range only by an adult male that I collected 

 on Doi Suthep, 3,300 feet, January 26, 1937. The northern speci- 

 mens before me (which I cannot separate from Chinese birds) were 

 taken between September 28 and April 18, and the form is probably 

 only a winter visitor, but it must be noted that Gyldenstolpe took 

 an example at Khun Tan as late as May 1 ( 1914) . 



Beyond the fact that this bird is more an inhabitant of lowland 

 deciduous forest than of the mountain evergreen, it seems not to 

 differ in habits from the preceding race. 



Gyldenstolpe states (1916) that his specimens had the irides 

 brownish red; the bill pink; the feet and toes plumbeous. 



O. c. diffusus is most readily distinguished from tenuirostris by 

 its having the bill much more robust and the black nuchal band so 

 wide as to cover the occiput as well as the nape. The fully adult 

 male differs in having the entire upperparts golden-yellow, like the 

 underparts. The adult female and the younger male have the up- 

 perparts much like those of the adult male of tenuirostris, except 

 that the rump and upper tail coverts are golden-yellow. 



